I'm having one of those weeks where nothing I touch goes right...
You'll recall an earlier post about a possibly missing bush to a SRAM 9.0
rear mech? Someone kindly pointed out to me that the spare jockey wheel
set clearly has a bush. So I bought a set, disassembled the mech
again... and found that the jockey wheels in the set were nothing like,
and clearly inferior to, the original jockey wheels, and that the
bushing which came with the set definitely wouldn't fit the original. So
I've reassembled the damn thing with the original jockey wheel sans
bush, and I've got the spare set as, erm, spares.
Never mind, I thought, while I'm down here in the bike shed I'll fit that
new brake to the Mantra. Brief background: my Mantra had a perfectly
nice pair of Avid V brakes on the front, but they were missing an
adjustment screw. This didn't matter terribly, because I adjusted them
by bending the spring and they worked fine, but recently I picked up a
fairly nice apparently brand-new set of Tectro V brakes. Standard fit, V
brakes, no problem. And having the adjusting screw would make brake
set-up easier...
The only problem was, the bloody things came with blue Loctite on the
threads. Well, most people use blue Loctite, so it must be OK, I'm just
old fashioned. But as soon as I'd screwed the first one in as far as the
Loctite it went incredibly stiff. 'This isn't right' sort of stiff. So I
unscrewed it, and it unscrewed perfectly easily. I examined the thread,
no problem. I compared it with the length of the bolt out of the Avid,
no difference. Unfortunately the washer on the Tectro bolt was captive
on the bolt, and the washer on the Avid was captive on the brake body,
so I couldn't just just use the old bolt. Ho hum. Most people use Blue
Loctite, it must be OK. So I screwed it back in, and, up to the Loctite
blob, it went perfectly easily. And then it went stiff again. So I
heaved on the allen key, and... sheared the bolt.
$%*&#!
So, where before I had a working bike with a minor fault that only I knew
about, now I've got an unridable bike which is going to take major
surgery to sort out. It's my spare full suspension bike, so it doesn't
justify huge amounts of money. But it's a nice bike and it would be a
shame to scrap it. So the options are
(1) use a stud extractor to get the broken bolt out - tricky.
(2) get a replacement set of forks. I always meant to replace the forks
on that bike - they're Psylos, which aren't wonderful, but any
replacement is going to cost real money.
(3) put a disk brake on the front. I've got a Hayes HFX9 front sitting
doing nothing, but it would mean a new front wheel because the
current one doesn't have a disk-ready hub.
Bother! It really isn't my week.
--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
,/| _.--''^``-...___.._.,;
/, \'. _-' ,--,,,--'''
{ \ `_-'' ' /
`;;' ; ; ;
._..--'' ._,,, _..' .;.'
(,_....----''' (,..--''